Plants for a wildlife garden - Part 1

Do you like a garden that attracts many kinds of birds? Are you interested in plants that appeal to butterflies and bees? And do you enjoy watching fish? I find that even in a small garden pond frogs, tadpoles, nymphs and water spiders make themselves at home.

In this series you will find trees, shrubs and plants that can help provide a suitable habitat for wildlife. Foxes, hedgehogs and other small four-legged animals all visit gardens. Ideas for encouraging wildlife to a garden will be found in future issues. And ways to deter the animals and plants you don’t want!

Easy plants to grow for bees and butterflies

In my garden there are many plants that draw crowds of butterflies. In summer buddleja cultivars become covered with them.(This shrub can be propagated easily from cuttings). Lavender - including the exotic species - and many of the sedums, also seem to be especially attractive to butterflies at this time of year.

Butterflies and birds like holly

Small blue butterflies flutter around holly bushes. The variety Ilex aquifolium ‘Handsworth New Silver’ is recommended for birds. Did you know that in April and May berries and flowers are often to be seen together on a holly?

Provide food and shelter

Birds go regularly to gardens where there is food and shelter for them. You can attract various kinds of bird if you remember to leave fruits and seeds to ripen. And grow several different types of plants that bear berries.

Some birds eat apples, cherries, currants and other soft and hard garden fruit. Apples are in blossom now in May and the fruit will make an attractive show in autumn. Several cultivars of crab apple have highly ornamental red fruit, and Malus ‘Golden Hornet’ produces small yellow apples. Encourage blackbirds for their beautiful song – to be heard repeatedly every evening in summer from a nearby tree – by planting ivy Hedera helix to encourage nesting. Large, rambly old plants on fences and walls make good nesting sites and their black berries are attractive to blackbirds.

If you are looking for a shrub that is attractive to birds and has more than one decorative feature, choose Viburnum opulus for red berries in autumn, white flowers in summer. Or Ribes odoratum for its scented flowers followed by black berries in late summer. For a climber, the purple-leaf grape Vitis vinifera ‘Purpurea’ is a good choice, or the bright red-berried honeysuckle. Many people forget that roses are as colourful in autumn, when the black or red hips ripen, as they are in flower during summer.

A number of herbs prove irresistible to bees. For example, ornamental chive Allium schoenoprasum ‘Forescate’, but there are many more and we shall come to them later. Bees love plants with tubular or daisy-form flowerheads, and it is thought that they favour pink and purple colours. A plant they can’t ignore is Centauria nigra – and there is a pale pink cultivated variety of the mauve knapweed.

Poppy seed heads are decorative, they provide food for birds and butterflies fly to the flowers. A favourite of many gardeners is the distinctive oriental poppy ‘Cedric Morris’. This perennial variety has flowers of a subtle shade of pink.

Caterpillars feed on garden plants

There are weeds and grasses that butterfies lay their eggs on. But unfortunately it is not true that they will always go to the weeds and leave your veg alone! Caterpillars leave unsightly patterns on leaves. To keep them in check, it is a good idea to use products that are not likely to damage other forms of wildlife.

There are products that will protect your plants without damaging the environment. Biological control offers gardeners the opportunity to control pests naturally by using special packs of ladybird and lacewing larvae that attack pests. The ladybird devours greenfly, whitefly, blackfly. There are also various alternative methods of controlling slugs, including capturing them in grapefruit halves or slug pubs, or by using a yucca extract.